As many devices using multimedia-information have recently been emerged, various methods for accessing and using the multimedia-information have been proposed and have come into practical use. There are many types of multimedia-information including sound, a still image, and a moving image. Devices for handling a very large amount of information, such as still-image information or moving-image information, and methods for accessing and using such information have already been come into practical use. To use such information as moving-image information or still-image information, a device provided with a large capacity and high throughput is required.
To effectively access and use multimedia-information such as still-image information or moving-image information, other than a technique for directly processing still-image information or moving-image information itself, for example, there has been developed a technique for redundantly saving information representing the contents and characteristics of the image information in a relatively easy form for handling, which is expected to be referenced and used for handling the still-image information or the moving-image information. This redundant information is generally called “meta-data”, which has been incorporated in more standards for a recording format, for example, of still-image or moving-image. Recently, a standard only for the standard for formatting the meta-data has also appeared.
Main purposes of the current methods for using meta-data are to search for image information and the like. And there are various contents of meta-data. In case of moving-image information, various types of meta-data are used including contents of the moving-image information, information on shooting location and a shooting device, information on a shot object, quantitative characteristics and typical parameters of color and sound of the moving image. The multimedia information tends to increase in size along with improvement in sound and image quality, which apparently leads more active use of meta-data. In addition, there will be more variations in content of meta-data.
Under such a condition, a system with object-oriented data management method is provided in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 08-077116 or No. 11-312081. To disperse loads, the system is provided with a central processor for determining a device or a program responsible for each process by using an object (data) and an attribute (meta-data) for referencing the attribute and each state, so that an appropriate process can be directed to an appropriate processing part. However, these systems have some problems: They cannot dispense with a central processor and they cannot process any data which requires a processing method that cannot be dealt with each of the included devices.
Under a condition with various and extensive types of meta-data, it is not easy to provide a device or a method that supports all the meta-data. Thus, such a device and a method always have a high possibility of encountering an unknown or unsupported type of meta-data, or a type of meta-data that cannot be processed on account of throughput or memory thereof. Therefore, it can be expected that a method is required which efficiently processes such an unknown or unsupported type of meta-data or any type of meta-data that cannot otherwise be processed when the device comes across such a type of data. The current standards for meta-data are mainly intended for a search usage, and therefore, an approach concerning an effective usage of meta-data other than the search usage (e.g. editing usage) is few.
As mentioned above, there are various types of meta-data, usage pattern, a way of use, or a storing way of meta-data, with a tendency to increase.
Multimedia information includes several types of information which can be edited in various ways such as moving-image information. When moving-image information added with a piece of meta-data is edited, for example, the added piece of meta-data can be inconsistent with the contents of edited moving-image. If contents of the inconsistent piece of meta-data are not updated, the piece of meta-data cannot be used correctly. However, as mentioned above, there are too many types of meta-data for a device editing a moving-image to appropriately update a piece of meta-data, which is an unknown to or unsupported by the device. Thus, one or more pieces of meta-data are left incorrect.
Therefore, it is important to have a method for facilitating a process involved with above-mentioned updating of apiece of meta-data to make a piece of meta-data always adapted to an appropriate use. Such kind of method is necessary under an environment where a piece of meta-data is frequently used.